During the second Ice Age, a seal-hunter named Essex (Newman) takes his pregnant young wife Vivia to the City where his brother lives, only to have his family fall victim to an assassin's hand. Essex chases down the fleeing killer, but somebody beats him to the punch. The rest of the movie is basically Essex trying to discover the reason for the killings. Sort of a sci-fi mystery, but interwoven with heavy philosophical rhetoric. I rented this after reading a lot of the reviews here and was expecting a nearly incomprehensible art house movie. But, if you're paying attention, its really not that complex or alienating -and its slowness serves the world it depicts. This is an Ice Age and nobody is doing a lot of moving around.

`Quintet' refers on one level to the game these Ice Agers play to pass the time until their eventual demise (apparently those of child-bearing age have mostly passed on, and those left are not trying anymore). It basically involves `killing' your opponent's pieces in a contest to see who will face the `sixth man' at the end. The problem is, somebody is taking the game beyond the board...

Good movie with a satisfying ending and much about the nature of existence (`life is a brief respite between the void before birth and the void after death, so treasure your experiences and your hardships...' I'm paraphrasing), but with the pace of `Dune.'

A recommended rental for a slow Saturday or Sunday morning or for the more adventurous, midnight hour screening.